


You Can't Con God

by IraBragi



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, I'm Sorry, Major character death - Freeform, Nate-Centric, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 19:12:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10225151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraBragi/pseuds/IraBragi
Summary: Nathan Ford has been an honest drunk, and a drunk thief, a father, a husband and a grandfather, a man of peace and violence, a man defined by his failures and his triumphs.  As he waits for god to take him he thinks that he doesn’t have a clue what or who he is but he feels strangely at peace.  He is ready to see how his creator measures him.





	

“The one person you can’t con son, is God.” Jimmy Ford took a deep swallow of his whisky and looked at Nate across the wooden bar. “You can bamboozle, threaten, beat, or bribe any man on earth but when you meet your maker it’s as the man you are. Don’t forget that son.”

  
Nate had rolled his eyes and sipped at his beer. It was the last night before he left for seminary and much to his surprise his father had invited him down to the old bar, “for old times sake.”

  
Jimmy Ford was mostly resigned to his leaving by that point. Besides, Nate was pretty sure that his father saw being a priest and being a bookie as more or less equivalent career paths. He’s been so cocky back then. Insulted that a career criminal would lecture a soon-to-be man of god on the state of his soul.

  
Nate looks at his hands. He is older than his father had been that day. “You can’t con god son” he thinks that his father forgot the second part of the saying, “but if you are very smart you just might outrun the devil.” But where do you run when the devil is sitting across from you? He takes a swallow of his coffee and Sophie hands him a bottle of scotch.  
____________  
After he gave Sophie the not-stolen ring and they walked out the door into their future Nate had begun to believe that Father Paul might have been right. That God does send blessings on both the sinners and the saints. He had married the two of them – Sophie had been radiant and Nate couldn’t keep the tears out of his eyes. Nate had spent so many years believing that everything good in him had died in that cold white hospital room. Maybe it had and maybe god was laughing when he decided to use a bunch of criminals, a lot of booze, and an international crime spree to redeem one lost soul. Father Paul spoke about the redeeming nature of love.

  
The hitter, hacker, and thief-turned-mastermind had settled into their new roles too. The world shook where they walked and wherever they went they left it a better place. Nate may have been an old fashion man but he was far from blind. He never had a word for it – that was Sophie’s area not his – but when their first child had Hardison’s hair and nose and two years later little Jimmy’s sister came into the world screaming with Eliot’s eyes all he felt was awe that he should be so blessed as to be a grandfather.

  
Loving Jimmy and Alice (cold white room, the sound of shattered breathing, his voice hoarse from screaming) made him crave the numbing burn of liquor but their eyes gave him the courage to put down the cup and show little Jimmy his great grandfather’s favorite card trick instead. When they were three and five years old Parker, Hardison, and Eliot had come to him very seriously and asked his blessing to permanently retire from Leverage Inc.

  
“The black book is mostly wrapped up and what we can’t do we have found others who can carry on. And we won’t ever stop totally (Nate had a sudden vision of Parker stealing the crown jewels with Alice strapped to her back) but it’s time for us to focus on raising them. All five of them look out to the back yard where Jimmy was digging in the sandbox (the only one in the state with motion sensors) and Alice was playing with a toy train. She seems to be making her doll jump from one car to another. Nate wonders what heist she is planning.

  
They got three more years than he had with Sam.

  
It was stupid and senseless and meaningless. A two bit underling in a far larger con had decided to try to make himself look good to his bosses (and get personal revenge at the same time.) Leverage had taken his bank account but his bomb took their heart.

  
Hardison, Jimmy, and Alice had been driving home from visiting Nanna when the car exploded into a ball of flames.

  
None of them were ever able to fully figure out how he had found them. It’s not like they had gotten lax exactly, but even Eliot had agreed that they were relatively off the grid. Maybe Hardison could have found out but in the end it didn’t matter.  
\-----------  
Nate looked across his cup at them, at Parker’s badly stitched arm and broken ribs, at Eliot’s newly dislocated-then-reset shoulder and the smell of gun powder on his hands. The devil was in their eyes.  
“So we go steal justice” he tells them.

  
“Hard to put dead men in jail.” Eliot rumbles.

  
“Too many little pieces” Parker spits.

  
Sophie is crying quietly.

  
“No that was retribution, now we go find justice.” The devil looks back at him through his children’s eyes. He remembers how it felt when it was him. He remembers the rage. The pain. He knows there is no outrunning the devil this time. Maybe there never was – for any of them.

  
“I don’t know if I can” Parker whispers.

  
“You do it for them.” He says.

  
They burry Hardison and the children on hill. There are no priest or prayers.

  
“Are we really going to do this?” Sophie asks him afterwards.

  
“Do you think they won’t regardless?” He counters. He kisses her then, “you could leave you know. There won’t be much call for a grifter in what comes next.”  
She looks him in the eye then, still the woman he fell in love with over stolen art and bullets, so many years ago. “Till my last breath” She says.

  
Nate stops drinking. He trades blood for whisky and finds that one is about the same as the other. It’s Sophie that surprises him. Eliot, himself, even Parker, all had blood on their hands long before this. Sophie had always held herself above that. Now she stands beside them and helps them rip the world apart.

  
It’s not justice, not like people today want to think about it – it’s far too bloody for that – more like Biblical reprisal. An eye for an eye, pain for pain, and a life for a life. There are no more delicately planed cons and finely tuned traps, now they are a blunt hammer with a list of people who look like nails.

  
Nate was never stupid enough to believe that this would end any way but one. In a way it’s his last gift to the children he never expected to have but loves with all his heart. (Wryly he thinks that after so many years of hating his own father it’s ironic that he is far more twisted a bastard than his old man.)

  
There is no audio but he watches on the hacked security cameras (Sophie is working another angle, he had been trying to coordinate both at once.) Eliot and he both realize that there is no way out at the same time. The coms were down since the base is swept for all electronics every 30 seconds. He watches Eliot try to push Parker out of the way, to get her out even though there is no out, but she stands firm. He watches her shake her head. They look at the camera and smile then hold each other tight.

  
It’s surprisingly simple to steal a body, or in this case two. They burry them next to the rest of their family. On Eliot’s grave they put “Greater love hath no man that this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” On Parker’s they engrave part of the blueprint of Buckingham palace, she would approve. On Hardison’s grave there are three rings intertwined and two hearts below them.

  
After that they just stop. It’s not that they don’t care but rather that the strings that had held him upright were suddenly cut and Nathen Ford finds that he just can’t stand anymore. He trades blood back for whisky and searches for his own escape.

  
Sophie cries and pleads and screams, then she leaves. One day Father Paul comes. He takes one look and doesn’t talk about redemption, or change, or sin. He doesn’t even take away the bottle. He takes Nate to the graves and prays over them. Then he takes Nate home and for a long time they talk about everything and nothing. How Sister Mary had eyes in the back of her head in third grade English. How his church has a new stained glass window (from a generous anonymous donor.) About the licorice sticks they would steal from the grocery story as boys. Before he leaves he askes Nate if he can pray. Nate tries to steady his shaking hands and nodes.

  
Father Paul doesn’t use the traditional words but he gives Nate as close to last rights as a failed priest, turned conman, turned good man, turned murderer can receive.

  
“From this dark world into Thy eternal light. Amen”

  
“Thank you” Nate says.

  
“Any time”

  
Sophie comes back the next day. “I don’t know how to keep on going.” She whispers. They hold each other.

  
“The one person you can’t con son, is God.”

  
His father’s words echo in his mind. Nathan Ford has been an honest drunk, and a drunk thief, a father, a husband and a grandfather, a man of peace and violence, a man defined by his failures and his triumphs. As he waits for god to take him he thinks that he doesn’t have a clue what or who he is but he feels strangely at peace. He is ready to see how his creator measures him.

  
On his head stone Sophie puts a verse from Exodus, “and he wrestled with God saying, I won’t let you go unless you bless me.”


End file.
